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Andrew Young tells New Orleans how it can be more like Atlanta: Jarvis DeBerry

Ruby Bridges

U.S. Deputy Marshals escort six-year-old Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, La., in Nov. 1960. The first grader is the only black child enrolled in the school, where parents of white students are boycotting the court-ordered integration law and are taking their children out of school. (AP Photo)

Atlanta has kind of dreamed its way into a future." -- Andrew Young, New Orleans native and former mayor of Atlanta

Two things New Orleans has longed for; two things have historically eluded its grasp: a one-stop shop in City Hall and an Applebees in the East. Oh, the politicians who have promised one thing or the other, if they weren't promising both. But doing business on Perdido Street continued to take multiple stops -- if not days -- and residents east of the Industrial Canal had to make do without baskets of riblets and without grilled chicken wonton tacos.

There's no news to report on the Applebees watch, but last month the seventh-floor of City Hall was finally fashioned into a place where residents could find some help and not a hassle. The City Planning Commission, Historic District Landmarks Commission, Safety and Permits Department and Vieux Carre Commission are all located there now, and the idea is that residents who need to do business with the city will finally be spared the run around.

This centralization of services is a welcomed development, for sure, but it's a pity that it counts as news in the 21st century. Andrew Young, who was mayor of Atlanta in the 1980s, said when he led that city, his administration reduced the time it took to get a building permit from seven months to about seven minutes.

For twenty-five cents, residents could park outside Atlanta's City Hall for a half hour, Young said Tuesday afternoon in New Orleans. He wanted Atlantans to be able to park, transact their business and leave before their meter expired.

"Atlanta has kind of dreamed its way into a future," he said. Its officials came up with the slogan " a city too busy to hate," he said, at a time when "we were worse than New Orleans." Arkansas had been "poised to be the business leader of the South," Young said, but the resistance to civil rights led by then Gov. Orval Faubus chased investors away.

Young, who turned 81 this week, was in Martin Luther King Jr.'s inner circle. His later success as mayor of one of the country's fastest growing cities demonstrates that racial harmony is an accelerant to progress.

New Orleanians have a depressing habit of seeing racial advancement as a zero-sum game. One group's gain is counted as the other group's loss. But Young said Atlanta boomed because its government officials insisted that those historically left out be given a significant percentage of contracts and that, as a result, everybody has benefited. Before that city's disadvantage business policies took effect, he said, "not a single white-woman-owned company was doing business with the city." The push for inclusion didn't just benefit black people.

Andrew Young on New Orleans and AtlantaAndrew Young, a native New Orleanian and former mayor of Atlanta talks March 12, 2013, about how the two cities diverged during the days of the civil rights movement.

Entergy is the only company New Orleans has on Fortune's top 500 list, our airport is improved but hardly competitive with Hartsfield-Jackson, and I doubt anybody here could conceive of our hosting the Olympics.

I'm not a fan of sprawl, and Atlanta's metropolitan area is nothing if not sprawling. Still, in so many things that matter, that city beats New Orleans. But as Young pointed out, it's not because New Orleans lacks the ability to do the same. "This is really a high potential beautiful city," he said. "In many ways it's got much more going for it in the way of history and culture than Atlanta, and it just hasn't been packaged and marketed right. "

He said, "There's nothing magic about this. There are some simple principles if government adheres to them." Given the 21-count indictment charging former Mayor Ray Nagin with corruption and the 24 guilty verdicts a jury in Detroit just gave handed its former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, Young's next point about how to run a thriving city ought to resonate.

"You've gotta be honest," he said. "You can make more money (legitimately) in an honest economy than you can steal in a dying economy."

Make that three things that have eluded our grasp: a consistently honest government. If we get that, I think we'd all be satisfied, Applebees or not.